The 2022 Winter Olympics Are So Depressing

The Winter Olympics have always been one of my favorite sporting events. In 2022, I could not care less.

Growing up in Connecticut, the Winter Olympics appealed to me because I loved winter. Playing in the snow was fun. Skiing was something we did. We played hockey outside. I knew about curling before it went mainstream.

The Winter Olympics of my youth all had wonderful memories. I remember the Battle of the Brians skating competition during the 1988 Games in Calgary. I was deeply invested in the triumphs and failures of Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen. I remember pretending to be sick (don’t tell my Mom) so I could skip school to watch the U.S. hockey team play the Russians, then the Unified Team, in 1992.

The 1994 Winter Games were obviously a whole different thing entirely, with the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan scandal quite literally dominating the world. Even as I grew older, the Winter Games remained a constant source of entertainment. The 2002 Games took place during my junior year of college and damned if me and my fraternity brothers weren’t glued to the television watching it. The 2010 Games featured one of the great hockey games in the history of the sport, when Sidney Crosby became a national hero in Canada, and a permanent villain in my household.